Heroes' Hiro Nakamura isn't the only character to find that their superpowers may ultimately be responsible for their death. Here are five more fictional characters for whom the superhero dream comes at a potentially fatal price.
Kid Flash 1
What Seems To Be The Problem? After gaining his powers in a recreation of the same accident that gave Barry Allen his, Wally West went through something his mentor hadn't - super-powered puberty. The same changes that made Wally a man also made the superspeed chemicals toxic, which meant that each time he used his powers, he took another step closer to death.
Is Death Guaranteed? Nope. In what can only be described as 'lazy plotting,' Wally was zapped by a villain's energy blast that managed to cure him of this ailment, a fact he celebrated by taking on the role of the Flash after Barry Allen's apparent death.
Impulse/Kid Flash 2
What Seems To Be The Problem? Even if puberty doesn't kill you, being a super-speedster comes with other deadly problems if Bart Allen is anything to go by: He's suffered from a hyper-metabolism that ages him much faster than he should on two separate occasions, now.
Is Death Guaranteed? Only kind of. After the problem was apparently solved the first time by forcing Bart to overload his own metabolism by running really fast (No, I'm not really sure how that works, either), it came back to haunt him in later life, and he died from it - except that his younger self was somehow stolen away into the future and brought back to life. I'm not sure how that worked, either, but at least it undid the character's unfortunate (and somewhat sensationalistic) death.
Spawn
What Seems To Be The Problem? Al Simmons was a murdered soldier who returned to Earth as a Hellspawn, with seemingly unlimited magical powers. Problem is, those powers are limited depending on the lifeforce of the symbiote he's become attached to on the process - Using his powers too often could result in its death... and his.
Is Death Guaranteed? Not in the slightest. As the series continued, creator Todd McFarlane and others came up with numerous workarounds, including new power sources, and various metamorphoses for the symbiote instead of deaths. As long as McFarlane can continue to make money from Spawn, expect death to be avoided.
Warlock/Doug Ramsey
What Seems To Be The Problem? It's the ultimate buddy movie waiting to happen: He's a techno-organic entity who requires other beings' lifeforce to survive! He's a nerd with a mutant gift for languages who'll happily give up his lifeforce to be part of the New Mutants! Talk about an enabling relationship.
Is Death Guaranteed? For Doug? Yes, although it wasn't Warlock's fault - He jumped in front of a bullet meant for fellow New Mutant Wolfsbane. Warlock lives on (and for awhile, even thought he was a re-animated Doug), helping to defeat alien invasions in Marvel Comics' Annihilation: Conquest and is due to return to the revived New Mutants series soon, as is Doug... as a zombie.
Kid Psycho
What Seems To Be The Problem? The wonderfully-named Legion of Super-Heroes wannabe Kid Psycho can use his advanced will power to move objects with his mind, and even travel through time thanks to the entirely unexplained telekinetic power of mind-time-travel (No, we really don't know about that either). The only problem is that, with each use of his magnificent mind, he takes one year off his life.
Is Death Guaranteed? Sadly, yes; he sacrificed himself during DC Comics' 1985 Crisis On Infinite Earths. The 31st Century is a lesser place for his loss.
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